Kim Kardashian – Twitter Advertising

, ,
What better way for a professional socialite as Kim Kardashian to stay connected with her followers, and build her personal brand through Twitter and Twitter advertising.  The same can apply to your local business, whether is online or offline.
Apart from Google AdWords PPC or the collaborative Microsoft Ad Centre between Yahoo and Bing (MSN), placement advertising, ad buys on social media websites as Facebook,  LinedIn and now Twitter are also gaining importance in a campaign buy.
Similar to Facebook Advertising, Twitter also provides an advertising platform with access to millions of eyeballs immediately. Twitter advertising can be quite effective for gaining mass exposure, as its one of the top 10 most visited sites in the world. In addition, its direct response medium that most followers or users of Twitter will receive the ads through their web browser, email, retweets to social profiles and directly on their iPhone, Blackberry or Android. Read more
by

Social Technographics – Your Social Media Reputation

,

Google now taking front stage with improving relevancy of search results by looking at what others are saying about your brand, is one of the latest advances of applying SMM (social media marketing) to SEO. It just makes sense – hold a sound reputation among your personal social circles and within the markets, should be part of the equation of delivering ‘quality’ search results.

Taking a step back before applying SMM to your Search strategy, one must first understand how they can effectively measure the impact and investment of a SMM strategy. Fail to plan, plan to fail. The same applies here with a social media strategy execution.

Though among all the anticipated conversations, comments, sharing, tweets, etc. that you seek to crowd source to others to build your brand or products online reputation, its important to first understand how you’ll measure all of this within your SMM strategy. Read more

by

2011 Twitter Marketing Tips

,

Twitter - Internet MarketingTwitter, among Facebook, are those hot keywords we see from clients quite often who want to build into their marketing mix…yet let alone understand what it is or how its useful. Everyone is one it, everyone is using it, but how its used is another story among businesses. While we find the use of Twitter and Facebook used sparingly among client internet marketing strategies, there is a fit in the mix to compliment other online marketing programs – Search, SEO, direct marketing, branding or even an arm of a seasonal marketing campaign. So for those Internet marketers, or business owners, kicking off 2011 with SMM (social media marketing) at the top of their marketing list, we’ve provided a few Twitter tips to help you consider where and how the dirty blue bird will fit within your plans.

Now remember, Twitter is one of those media’s that really does not have a specific approach for every business but rather a variety of approaches that businesses can take depending on what is right for them. It’s a business tool to reach your market and audience. While the jury is out if Twitter is just a lot of noise with no one really listening, we have seen it work for clients who can build up a solid loyal following – quality over quantity.

Tip #1:  Twitter & Promotions
Got promotions for your business and not sure how to exactly go about pushing the message to the market? Sure a targeted email blast is a given, but Twitter is also a great way to go.  Not only does your audience pick up the promotion immediately on their Blackberry or iPhone, but Twitter posts now appear randomly in search results giving you an increased chance for visibility. Hint – think ‘local’ (ex. Vancouver cupcakes 50% off). Read more

by

Measuring Social Media Success – KPI’s, ROI & Beyond Branding

,

social media marketingBlogs, Twitter, Facebook it’s all the hype with today’s marketers and leaking into the fabrics with business owners and entrepreneurs jumping on the latest buzz words and making a best attempt on understand what all of this Social Media means, and how it can work for their business.

Reminds me of the dot com era when businesses jumped on the cart to put a website online, but not truly understanding how it will work for their marketing and business and provide value, other than doing it because everyone is, and of course bragging rights.
I receive at least 3 of these questions a week, and many more of prospects calling in asking for these services, but not understanding what they are, how they work, or most importantly, what value and ROI will they receive out of it. And this is where we begin…needs, objectives, metrics and ROI. Though while every self-proclaimed “Social Media Expert” may have the answers that sound good to the prospective client, the proper answer simply is understanding what Social Media components will work best for the prospects/clients business, and presenting those key performance indicators to benchmark those components, and the resulting ROI. Too many web marketing companies and publishers will have different ways and means to measure a Social Media campaign success, and while many may be correct, the rapid growth of Social Media space has resulted in to many complimentary metrics to gauge campaign performance and effectiveness. So a good starting point is to first understand some standard definitions for Social Media metrics to give a foundation of how to measure Social Media campaign success, and from this, tailor the metrics to the clients objective(s).

IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) released in early 2009 a proposed standardization of these Social Media metrics to lay the foundation for publishers and online marketing experts to get everyone on the same page. Similar to early days of the web and analyzing website performance by the various metrics available at that time – hits, page views, visitors, etc.

The Social Media Metrics standardization expands on the fundamental metrics in an effort to make campaign reporting for agencies and advertisers more consistent and less wild-wild-west. You can download the Social Media Metrics document here. It also offers some segregation between 3 distinct channels of social media; and supplementary metrics for each channel; Social Media sites (ex. Facebook), blogs / blogosphere, and widgets and applications. Read more

by

Twitter Strategy – Building Organic Links

,

Twitter Social Media toolI must admit I was one of those people who at first didn’t care less about the social media tool of Twitter and felt it was just one of many social media tools that will come and go. I was wrong. Twitter does have a purpose that supplies the demand from thee mass public, and can be complimentary fit in the overall online strategy to distribute content, and built external organic links.

Twitter is a social media tool to communicate and stay connected to the masses through short, brief updates that answer the question “what are you doing now?”? I like to think of it as an exploitation of Facebooks status feature, that taps into the psyche of human natures thirst for gossip. As a means to quickly stay up-to-date on what people are doing, its a brilliant tool to feed this thirst.

Alternatively – just watch this video on “twitter in plain english”

However, in this post I won’t go into details on how Twitter can be leveraged strategically for the overal mix of your strategy, but simply to give a high level understand how Twitter can support an organic search strategy to spread content and build those oh-so sought after external one-way organic links. Keep in mind, Twitter is not a link building tool, though externally it can be utilized indirectly as link bait. Read more

by

Influencing Purchase Behavior: Blog Social Media vs. Social Networks

,

social media blogs vs. social networks and a consumers purchasing behaviorOne of the top studies reported in 2008 found social media blogs influence a consumers online social behavior of their purchasing decisions far greater than social networks, as blogs that influence consumers generate a timely conversation and perceived as a greater trusted resource.

Covered by Clickz, the study conducted by JupiterResearch called “Harnessing the Power of Blogs”, looks at the evolving influence from online visitors/readers, and how they engage and interact with the blog media platform.

With the explosion of blogs (blog marketing) over the last few years, and the integration of professional, personal and industry blogs into the marketing framework of companies, more and more individuals seek blogs as their direct form of news and consumer research and informative guides. This is shown from the study where JupiterResearch noted a 300 percent growth in monthly blog readership in the past four years.

The curious question is why? Why blogs? Aside from the rich, frequent content that’s absorbed by Google and compliments a businesses search strategies to produce saturated results on the core subject matter the reader is seeking, readers find blogs more useful as a resource by using its links and multiple resources referenced in the blog. This contributes to spark or extend the conversation on the blog post/article. And the frequency blog readers flock to the web to jump into the conversation is shown with 49% of blog readers defined as someone who reads a blog at least once a month, and 71% reading more than one. And multiple blog sources reflect more opportunities for contextual and online ads, referrals in comments by readers, and any direct or indirect references within the content itself. Read more

by

Niche Marketing 2009 & The Value in Social Network Marketing

,

Chances have it you use a social network as Facebook or MySpace, or contribute to a social media platform, such as a personal or corporate blog. The online playground is full of social activities with everyone including your mother jumping onto the next latest and greatest way to connect with friends, family, professionals and groups of your related interests.

social network marketing niche marketing Even with the recent win of Barack Obama as America’s new president, his campaign tapped into leveraging social media and networks to reach out to the niche audiences throughout America – by ethnicity and age demographics. Whether a special environmental group locatd in Seattle, or the tens of thousands of non-voters between 20 to 30 years of age in Chicago and New York, social networks and media platforms were a successful channel to mix into the Obama’s marketing campaign to win new voters.

2009 will bring to the boardroom a number of conversations about how social network and media can fit into the upcoming marketing campaign or yearly marketing plan. Hell, any forward thinking company who’s marketing can shift as quickly as my snowboard will cut and curve down the hills of Whistler mountain this year, will be on the edge of trying to learn how best to fit social networks as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and social media as blogs and forums to into their marketing mix.

Sure, many marketers will use the excuse to invest into social network marketing as a brand exercise to build evangelists and advocates of their latest and greatest campaign. But the insightful managers and directors upstairs should also be looking for the hard pay off – to not assume that overal lift in sales must have resulted from the social network endeavors of the campaign. Better yet to understand what contributions to the campaign, specifically the social marketing tactics, can be monetized to drive new business and sales. Read more

by

2008 Top Social Networking Sites (May)

,

Reported in May, 2008 from comScore, the top social networking sites in terms of unique visitors is outlined below. LinkedIn saw the greatest percentage growth (not shown below – see below link), while MySpace and Facebook saw continued growth due to core focus on building interaction and engagement among its users.

No suprise to see LinkedIn climbing the charts so rapidly, as anyone familiar with this professional career social networking site would have saw a number of new features launch over the year, most providing good value to its users to draw them back into the site driving engagement, interaction and repeat visits.

2008 (May) Top Social Nework Sites

Reported by Clickz. Full chat found at http://www.clickz.com/3629976

by

BtoB Markets & Social Media Marketing

,

Social Media Marketing, or Social Community Marketing, is one of hot topics of 07 and so far of 2008. I find it interesting to hear numerous companies, clients and marketing peeps, jump on the coals of the subject, but struggle with the understanding of its application in their business model – especially for BtoB markets.

Social Network Marketing, or what I like to call “Social Community Marketing” helps companies capitalize on cutting-edge marketing techniques to build brand affinity and relationships through community, engagement, evangelism. As an increasing number of individuals obtain their research and information from non-traditional sources, the media of Social Marketing will help marketers gain unique insights into their market and what influences them.

Marketing via Social Media’s is the Web 2.0 of today and still in its infancy. Marketers struggle with its application and to make it work within their mix, and better yet, how to Read more

by